Therefore God Exists

Don’t you love lists? I spent an hour or so going through this one which has literally hundreds of proofs of God’s existence. Some were quite familiar because I’ve seen them right here on this blog before, in the comments section.

Here are ten that I really like:

1. ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES (I)
(1) My aunt had cancer.
(2) The doctors gave her all these horrible treatments.
(3) My aunt prayed to God and now she doesn’t have cancer.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

2. MORAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) In my younger days I was a cursing, drinking, smoking, gambling, child-molesting, thieving, murdering, bed-wetting bastard.
(2) That all changed once I became religious.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

3. ARGUMENT FROM FEAR
(1) If there is no God then we’re all going to not exist after we die.
(2) I’m afraid of that.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

4. ARGUMENT FROM AMERICAN EVANGELISM
(1) Telling people that God exists makes me filthy rich.
(2) Therefore, God exists.

5. ARGUMENT FROM FALLIBILITY
(1) Human reasoning is inherently flawed.
(2) Therefore, there is no reasonable way to challenge a proposition.
(3) I propose that God exists.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

6. ARGUMENT FROM META-SMUGNESS
(1) Fuck you.
(2) Therefore, God exists.

7. ARGUMENT FROM LONELINESS
(1) Christians say that Jesus is their best friend.
(2) I’m lonely, and I want a best friend.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

8. PROOF BY ANECDOTE
(1) God can be seen by those who believe in Him.
(2) If the God is seen, then He must exist.
(3) I have seen God.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

9. ARGUMENT FROM SPEAKING IN TONGUES
(1) My friend here, once started spontaneously speaking some jibberish that sounded to me kind of like Russian.
(2) But neither he nor I know anything about Russian.
(3) The only explanation is God.
(4) Therefore, God exists.

10. BENDER’S ARGUMENT (I)
(1) One day, demons were tap-dancing on my roof.  I prayed and they went away.
(2) Therefore, demons are really good dancers.
(3) Also, God exists.

Okay that last one is pretty stupid not as clear-cut as the others, but you get the point. So if you have some time to kill, you’ll find a lot more here (657 to be exact), from what looks like a growing list.

Preparing to come out

Strangely, I didn’t anguish about it. It just seemed like a natural progression.

Recovering Agnostic

It all started with the best of intentions.

First, there were a lot of issues that were flying around my head. My previous beliefs were becoming ever less secure, but I’d been through this before. Most people find their beliefs wax and wane, so this wasn’t anything I was going to bring up out of nowhere to people who I wouldn’t normally be discussing my theological positions with. It was just business as usual.

Then I started to drift away, losing my fear of unbelief and increasingly exploring those areas and imagining a life without religion. It was different, but possibly no more than increased empathy and openness to different arguments. I stayed put in the church, and nothing really changed. Still nothing that was worth specifically mentioning to anyone.

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Where religions come to die…

This…

Or this…

But from all appearances, it’s not gonna go easily. Perhaps religion is dead and buried already; what we’re still experiencing is that god-awful stink.

Meanwhile, Nigel Barber over at the Huff & Puff Post thinks religion will only be defeated by 2038, mostly through the rise of living standards.

Using the average global growth rate of GDP for the past 30 years of 3.33 percent (based on International Monetary Fund data from their website), the atheist transition would occur in 2035….

If national wealth drives secularization, the global population will cross an atheist threshold where the majority see religion as unimportant by 2041….

Averaging across the two measures of atheism, the entire world population would cross the atheist threshold by about 2038 (average of 2035 for disbelief and 2041 for religiosity). Although 2038 may seem improbably fast, this requires only a shift of approximately 1 percent per year whether in religiosity or belief in God. Using the Human Development Index as a clock suggests an even earlier arrival for the atheist transition.

I’m still skeptical however. 2035 seems way too optimistic. What’s the point of defeating religious belief if other forms of credulous belief persist?

But then again, one victory at a time.

The Debate That Wasn’t

Easing into Sunday evening watching a debate found accidentally on YouTube, has left me with some things to carp about.

I am posting the YouTube video here, so if you’ve got two hours to throw away, knock yourself out. The debate was between well-known cosmologist Professor Lawrence Krauss and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, who is styled as an author, lecturer and intellectual activist. The topic of debate was Islam or Atheism – Which Makes More Sense?

Need I point out who represented what point of view?

The points raised on both sides during the debate were not that important – I, and I’m sure those of you who listen to these kinds of debates will have heard them before in some form or the other. What really sustained my attention for two hours was the manner in which the debate was conducted, some of the strategies used, the seeming inability of the adjudicator Timothy Yusuf Chambers (a former Irish Catholic priest, converted to Islam) to affect any sort of control over the two protagonists, and an amusing event involving an outraged Muslim woman during the Q&A session, which I’ll come back to later.

While Hamza Tzortzis came clearly prepared with a lengthy written opening remark which he was at pains to point out was based on deductive logic, it was absolute rubbish. No doubt Lawrence thought so too and made it quite plain in his opening address. Deductive logic is all well and good, but if your conclusions are based on faulty premises, then it’s all just bullshit.

Professor Krauss on the other hand just winged his way through his opening statement, and chose to engage frequently with Tzortzis in and off the cuff manner. There was something I found disturbing about this though; Krauss often came across as rude, near-insulting and somewhat arrogant. But everything he said, made sense and was scientifically correct. To his credit, Tzortzis in the face of this onslaught of scientific reasoning tinged with rudeness, held it together remarkably well.

Krauss’s approach to the debate was of importance, and he even clarified that he preferred discourse to the strict and limiting formal debate format. The term he used was “chat,”  because he explained that it allows more room for people to explore, and gain knowledge, rather than just throwing rigid ideas at each other. There is much merit in this.

After watching this and other debates, it has dawned on me how debate about such opposing ideas as atheism and religion have improved over the years. It used to be that religious apologists would simply quote from religious text and other dogmatic theological literature and demand that it be accepted as unadulterated truth. And it used to be that simply asserting things without having to provide proof or evidence was common. Now, apologists prepare more thoroughly using logic and even science. Alas, logic and science used incorrectly, even disingenuously, will never trump the scientific method.

And now we come to that amusing incident. During the Q&A session a clearly irate, albeit foolish woman decided to use the opportunity to complain about some guy who had entered the debate late, and decided to sit at the rear of the hall next to a group of girls of which the complainant was a member. She was quite adamant that her values as a Muslim woman was violated by this latecomer who according to her, should have chosen to sit elsewhere with other men, because she had clearly distanced herself from the men in the audience as was required of her belief system.

Krauss pointed out quite nonchalantly that the debate was clearly advertised as a non-segregated event, and she should have chosen to watch the debate on YouTube, rather than demand deference to her quaint beliefs.

Quite so, Professor Krauss, quite so.

And so who was the winner? I’ll leave you to decide, but for me, science always wins.

The Rape of Morality

And so I got this perplexing question on my Contacts Page from someone by the name of Samuel who prefers to call himself Ghastly:

God Is real how could you not look at something and not see the miracles inside of it? So you are basically saying you can rape someone and be fine because in the end it doesn’t matter.

I’m simply astounded at how he jumped to the conclusion that I’d find rape acceptable because I don’t believe in one of the gods. Why he chose rape instead of one of the other no-no’s like murder or infanticide is not important. What is of concern is the perpetuation of the myth amongst believers, that without some arbitrary god’s absolute standard, there is no basis for good moral judgement and action.

If you examine the logic of Samuel’s belief, he’s basically saying that if there was no god, then he would find it acceptable to rape or act amorally in some other way. That’s totally absurd.

By his reasoning all non-believers are either rapists or potential rapists. He’s intimating that all non-believers are just hanging around waiting for the opportunity to rape someone, and that believers are all saints. That is a patently laughable insinuation where it not so serious and off the mark.

Frans de Waal a primatologist and biology professor at Emory University has conducted extensive research on the behaviour of Bonobo apes and concludes that they have some grasp of morality. While he’s not saying that apes are conclusively moral beings, his research indicates that they have the “basic building blocks” for morality. Professor de Waal also doesn’t reveal if he’s observed any apes worshipping the gods. Have you?

Morality comes from within, not above.

The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions: A Secular History of the “One True Faiths” by William Hopper

Right off the bat, this book is not a scholarly work on comparative religion; not by a long shot. It was never meant to be such. If you’re looking for a serious [and quite frankly, tedious] history of the world’s major religions, look elsewhere.

The light-hearted, often highly hilarious approach to the heavy subject matter earns this book my recommendation. Even the sub-title is ingenious.

As I mentioned earlier, the book is pretty hilarious, especially the treatment of Judaism and Christianity. Be warned though, that some of the humour will offend, maybe not the atheists [who no doubt will find a great deal to enthuse over], but those who still harbour delusions about religion, and off course the mother grundies.

I was a tad disappointed though that Hopper did not give Islam in particular, a good what-for, but tended to approach it with a good deal of circumspection. To be fair to him though, he did declare upfront that he did not have the budget for personal protection that author Salman Rushdie has at his disposal. And to be fairer still, perhaps this declaration in itself tells us all we need to know about the religion of Islam.

I also felt that he rushed through the history of Hinduism and Buddhism, but again, to be honest, I really did not want to read too deeply about the 330 million gods of Hinduism and the non-religious status of Buddhism.

Overall though, the book presents enough information to satisfy both the casual reader and those curious about the other major religions, enough crude humour for the atheist, and a lot to think about for the religious.

My favorite passages from the book:

In the beginning, we humans lived in the wild and ate whatever was slower or stupider than we were. At this time, we invented a thing called a “god.” The god was made from the mightiest elements mankind could see: fire, thunder, lightning… all the big scary stuff we didn’t understand but knew was powerful.

Abraham did indeed have seven sons. At least that’s what his wife Sarah, told him. The fact that he was way too old to be fathering children at the time didn’t seem to hinder him. I figure he was either naive as hell about his wife’s activities or he had something in his diet that the Ovaltine people would love to get their hands on.

The thing is, the Ark’s not lost. Never has been. About the only people who ever thought it lost were those that only looked to the Bible for information, ignoring the fact that there’s a whole planet full of books out there that also recorded history.

The idea of kosher foods had existed before this, but Jabna was where the Rabbis set it in stone and made for damned sure that every generation of Jews from then to now were subjected to boiled dough and potato pancakes. (it’s amazing what people will eat when you tell them it’ll get them into Heaven.)

History shows quite clearly that wealth sustains a people a hell of a lot better than a god does. The Intifida.

So, for those Christian readers who have not yet thrown this book into the garbage, here we go: the Gospel According to Will. The absolutely non-authoritative, non-inspired account of the life of JC. (Gospel, by the way, is Greek for “good news.” The original gospels were the “good news” given by the disciples to the Christians in places like Rome, Carthage, etc. My gospel is good news too. It’s just not good news for the Christians.)

And the power of Yahweh did go into her and did make her pregnant outside of wedlock. Her fiancée at the time did see this and did think “She did screw around on me, the stupid little trollop.” But then an angel of God did come to him, saying “Joseph, don’t worry about it. It was God who made her pregnant.” And Joseph accepted this, thinking “Oh great, I get to marry this women and for the rest of our lives I have to live with the fact that her first lover was Yahweh. Even if I do really well in bed and I think she’s really enjoying it, she’s going to be screaming “Oh God, Oh God! and I’ll never know if it’s me of Him that she’s yelling about.”

Martin Luther was born in 1483. He graduated from Erfurt University in 1505 with both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree. He had no major, and his education ran the gamut of courses: math, philosophy, languages, that sort of thing. He was raised, like the rest of Europe at the time, as a good Catholic. This meant he never saw the Bible.

Now, as near as we can figure, these original Indus Valley folks were an easy-going lot that farmed and honored all things. They weren’t war-like, and had no ideas of conquest or domination. Instead, they lived quiet lives that genuinely reflected a willingness to get along and care for the people and land around them. Naturally then, they were slaughtered mercilessly and wiped off the face of the Earth.

Here we get around to the Bhagavad Gita. It’s a really long, drawn out poetic epic that I highly recommend you never read. The plot sucks and frankly so do the characters, Krishna included.

The Dali Lama was born in Tibet. And China. And Korea. Before that he was born in India and, some think, Atlantis. The guy gets around.

In the end, despite the books flaws, I enjoyed it so much so that I’m going to get Hopper’s other book in this series “The Heathen’s Guide to Christmas,” just in time for the silly season.

10 Popular Myths About Atheists and Atheism by Amanda Marcotte

Image via Wikipedia

I’m frequently accosted by readers that respond to my blog posts, who use one or more of several common myths about atheists and atheism in their arguments with me.

It’s therefore quite obliging of Amanda Marcotte, author of It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, to collate 10 of the most popular myths for us all.

In an article on AlterNet she writes as follows:

In a regular poll conducted by political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell on American political attitudes, atheists recently lost their spot as as the most disliked group in America to the Tea Party. Still, number two is simply way too high in the unpopularity rankings for a group of people who just happen to spend Sunday mornings in bed instead of in church. Polling data shows that nearly half of Americans would disapprove if their child married an atheist and nearly 40 percent of Americans don’t see atheists as sharing their vision of American society, numbers that outstripped similar prejudices toward Muslims and African Americans.

Of course, the real reason atheists are so hated has little to do with jealousy for all their free time, but largely because most Americans are better acquainted with myths than with the realities of atheists’ lives. Unfortunately, atheists often have these myths tossed in their faces, usually by believers who would rather talk about what they heard atheists are like rather than uncomfortable subjects such as the lack of proof for any gods.

And here’s one of my all-time favorites; never fails to amuse me every time it’s used against me:

Atheists are just angry with God. Atheists often point out the logical inconsistencies of many religious beliefs—such as the belief both that God is all-good and all-powerful, but he somehow also allows evil to exist—and believers use that to conclude that atheists are angry with God. We aren’t. You can’t be angry with a being that you don’t believe exists. I’m no angrier with God than I am angry with Zeus or the aliens that keep kidnapping drunks sleeping in their cars. Anger with religions for promoting false beliefs isn’t the same thing as being angry at the being that believers invented.

Catch the other 9 here on AlterNet.

The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer

Subitled: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

I’ve always wanted to read one of Dr. Shermer’s books since he was recommended to me by an atheist friend a couple of years ago. However, I just could not find the right book at my local bookstores. I had to satisfy myself with watching him on YouTube giving one of many talks at events such as TED etc.

When Michael Shermer; publisher and chief editor of Skeptic magazine, published The Believing Brain, he billed it as his magnum opus, “synthesizing” 30 years of research; I just had to get it.

I thought it would be the ideal purchase for my newly acquired kindle, but for some strange reason only the Audiobook version was available for sale to South Africans. While it is always nice to have the text version available for future reference, I decided to go ahead and purchase the Audible Audiobook. It turned out to be a good decision as I could just sit back and listen to it for a little while every day while just relaxing after coming home from work, and still get in some reading of some of my other books on kindle.

Anyway, enough of this idle banter; back to the Believing Brain…

In the book, Shermer explains that we form our beliefs for subjective, emotional and psychological reasons while being influenced by environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture and society. We then go on to defend, rationalize and justify the beliefs we have formed by employing a number of cognitive biases such as authority and confirmation biases. This process of forming a belief first and then trying to explain it is called belief-dependent realism by Shermer.

Incidently, Shermer based the process of belief-dependent realism on model-dependent realism, as proposed by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design.

In the first part of the book, Shermer describes how Francis Collins, famous scientist and current director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA came to form his religious beliefs, considering that scientists are largely nonreligious or atheist. Shermer also shares with us how he himself became a skeptic.

In the second part of the book he explains concepts such as patternicity, that is how the brain looks for patterns in everything it “absorbs,” and agenticity which is the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by powerful invisible agents who involve themselves intentionally in it.

In parts three and four, Shermer explains how and why we form beliefs about Things Unseen such as gods and aliens, and Things Seen, respectively.

All very fascinating stuff indeed! This book is guaranteed to make you think about how you think and perhaps even reconsider some of those weird beliefs you might be holding close to your “heart.”

What Freedom of Speech Means to Christopher Hitchens

From Vanity Fair article

Whatever your feelings about the robust atheist beliefs of Christopher Hitchens, you will eventually admit that he was a marvellous orator, and an incredibly good writer too.

So it’s rather sad that he is currently fighting cancer, which is now laying claim to his vocal chords as well. However his mind is as strong as ever and it’s unlikely that the dastardly disease will make any inroads there.

It’s therefore a pleasure to be able to continue reading his work, the most recent of which is an article in Vanity Fair where he shares some thoughts on the loss of his voice and what it means to him. It begins so:

Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down.

Catch the rest of his thoughts here:

Christopher Hitchens: Unspoken Truths Culture: vanityfair.com.

What’s a nice Atheist boy supposed to do…

Image via Wikipedia

…when he comes across a nice Christian girl asking what’s she’s supposed to do, on one of her online newspaper columns.

Well, he wouldn’t have done much had he not read one of nice Christian girl’s responses to a comment from a reader.

Thami, let’s put it this was: would you date a girl who was terribly racist? No? Because I assume you despise racism as an intrinsic value in your life and would not be able to align yourself with someone whose values clash so much with your own. I don’t think this is “childishly discriminatory” but wise. You’re avoiding unnecessary conflict and heart ache. That’s how it is for me: I prefer to be with someone who shares the values I hold most deeply.

Okay, let’s start at the beginning.

Verashni Pillay, wrote an article in the Mail & Guardian Online, in which she claims to be a “Christian Christian.” Not knowing exactly what that means, I’ll just assume that she believes that she’s a better Christian than most. Verashni also believes that her kind of Christianity imbues her with a special set of morals and values which presumably ordinary Christians do not possess…and other faiths fail dismally to attain.

She will not align herself with anyone who is off a different faith to her own because Verashni believes fallaciously that religion is responsible for shaping a persons morals and values, and that somehow the religion she adopted or was born into, does it better than the rest. Yes, it’s always the case that Christianity somehow comes out on top every time someone compares morality. And she’s quite adamant because she was:

…all the while growing in the most inexplicably beautiful and satisfying relationship I’ve ever known — knowing God

Verashni finds it hard to believe that someone who kneels before a different idol, could possibly have the same values as her own. I greatly respect and admire her political beliefs, but while she harbours this much distrust towards those of competing faiths, I can only imagine the ire she reserves for those of no faith.

So what’s a nice Christian girl supposed to do?

How about abandoning archaic religious ideologies that divide, and start having relationships with beings that really matter.